Kxmode wrote on Jun 21, 2017, 14:20:Kinguin is okay, but there are constantly better deals on CDKeys, GreenManGaming, and a handful others. Nevermind the fact that Kinguin has a $3 "buyer protection" tax. CDkeys doesn't charge that. The price you see is the price you pay.

You can decline the protection with the click of a button xP GMG hasn't ever had lower prices than Kinguin. Maybe on a very rare circumstance.

What I'm saying is CDKeys bakes protection into the price. Kenguin provides the opt-out but they don't guarantee protection. That's what I was referring to.

I think charging $3 for key protection is shady. It's the responsibility of the platform to ensure buyer protection. Buying keys is already a gray market. It would behoove Kinguin and G2A to make protection a standard feature, not a premium.

Agreed. That said, on the one occasion where a key I bought from the G2A marketplace was revoked, they immediately refunded me even though I didn't sign up for their protection plan.

In addition to offering free protection, it would also be nice if they didn't charge extra for payment methods other than their own store credit.

Muscular Beaver wrote on Jun 21, 2017, 09:02:Previous games had a story, as small as it was. But this one is as non-existent as the Doom one (the original one). Actually even less, because sometimes you dont even know why youre there or why youre doing it.

HITMAN has no less of a story than the previous games, though you do have to pay more attention to actually learn it. As I said before, a lot of the story is conveyed through the environment and incidental dialogue and you'll miss most of that if you only play through each level once. I could explain the full story here and it would certainly require more than one sentence.

If you want to read HITMAN's story, go here. It's the basic plot synopsis and doesn't include most of the character development or backstory that you learn through incidental dialogue, of which there is plenty.

I'm not sure what game Beaver played but apparently he didn't pay attention to anything in it. Every mission has a briefing that explains who your targets are and why they need to be killed. If you eavesdrop on the numerous NPC conversations, you learn a lot more about the targets, their motivations, relationships, histories and roles in the overall story.

The Half Elf wrote on Jun 20, 2017, 21:46:Without the flash sales, the "Sales" are worthless anymore.

Flash sales were a gimmick. The publisher tells Steam what they will offer their games at. I prefer the new model - just tell me the lowest price you offer the whole week.

Except the size of the discount is directly correlated with its duration. The longer it's available, the weaker the discount. That's how sales work. A discount that's only available for 6 hours is going to be far better than a discount that's available for two weeks. That's why flash sales were good and why recent Steam sales have been so underwhelming.

On a side note, Cdkeys.com is a reliable source of good discounts on newer games. You can currently get DOOM for $13 and Prey for $34. Some people consider the site to be "gray market" but I've never had any issues with it.

That's great, but most of the time unless the developer/publisher is putting up the game on that site, neither is seeing any of your money.

Basically, it's as good as pirating at that point.

That's a pretty strange mindset. The keys aren't "fake." They were generated and sold by the developer/publisher and then resold to cdkeys.com. If the keys were stolen or otherwise fraudulent, they either wouldn't activate or they'd get revoked. Neither has occurred with any keys I've purchased. So yes, the developer/publisher has already been compensated for the keys and they are perfectly legit.

The Half Elf wrote on Jun 20, 2017, 21:46:Without the flash sales, the "Sales" are worthless anymore.

Flash sales were a gimmick. The publisher tells Steam what they will offer their games at. I prefer the new model - just tell me the lowest price you offer the whole week.

Except the size of the discount is directly correlated with its duration. The longer it's available, the weaker the discount. That's how sales work. A discount that's only available for 6 hours is going to be far better than a discount that's available for two weeks. That's why flash sales were good and why recent Steam sales have been so underwhelming.

On a side note, Cdkeys.com is a reliable source of good discounts on newer games. You can currently get DOOM for $13 and Prey for $34. Some people consider the site to be "gray market" but I've never had any issues with it.

Unfortunate that the PayPal offer only extends to UK customers. Also unfortunate that Valve got rid of the daily deals, flash sales and customer choice sales. Those discounts were always better because they were only available for a very limited time. Now that all discounts are available for weeks, they are inevitably less significant.

NetHead wrote on Jun 20, 2017, 19:01:PS; for any of "those" people that go on about things like "you don't like x-ray vision then don't use it" I suppose it's to much to ask them to consider that games with such things are designed around such things and with them in mind. For instance try something as simple as looking through a keyhole in this Hitman game, that's right they don't need to add such things when there's crap like x-ray vision.

Disclaimer: I've only played the second and third Hitman games, Contracts and Blood Money...I thought they were the first and second but apparently not...hmmm...I'm curious how janky the first one is and if it's good enough to play these days?

The first game is super janky and not really worth playing if you've already played Contracts. Contracts took all of the good levels from the first game anyway. Silent Assassin isn't really worth playing either, as both Contracts and Blood Money are better. Hitman is one of the rare series where each iteration (except for Absolution) was better than the last.

As for people complaining about x-ray vision in HITMAN, you can turn it off and still successfully complete every mission. I know because I turned off all assists (including x-ray vision) and completed every mission multiple times. It's not like quest markers in Skyrim, where you'd have no idea where to go or what to do without them. HITMAN rewards you for being perceptive and paying attention to your surroundings.

Quinn wrote on Jun 20, 2017, 11:26:*the suits sitting around the table*

Suit 1: Lets make it episodic. Shit seems so sell.

Suit 2: Yes! And lets remove any sense of a real story. That shit is expensive.

Suit 3: Yes! And lets show the players all the ways they can assassinate their target, so we can fill up that storyless void with useless replayability. Because achievements!

Suit 4: No idea why we'd do that but these pathetic, completionist fuckers swallow everything as long as it keeps them away from facing real life. So yes!

Suit 2: No reason to be so cynical, Laurens, but yes!

*and HITMAN 2016 was born*

Genuine question: Have you actually played HITMAN 2016? If you have, you would know that it has just as much story as Blood Money, Contracts, Silent Assassin and Agent 47. There is an overarching storyline that is conveyed through cutscenes between missions. All of the missions tie into the storyline as well.

In fact, one could argue that it has more story because they've really fleshed out the targets, NPCs and environments. There's plenty of backstory and side-story to discover in each level, which is part of the reason why the game has so much replayability.

Finally, you might be the only Hitman fan (are you actually a Hitman fan or did you only play Absolution?) that complains about replayability. Seriously, replayability is one of the pillars of the series.

In any case, it's cool of IO to do this, though the headline is misleading. They aren't giving the full Episode 1 for free, only the tutorial levels. Paris is not free.

I only played episode 1 but I have all the eps. I loved all Hitman games, except for Absolution. Hated how the disguise system did a 180 and those FUUUCKING assassination "achievements". Fuck that "these are the ways you can somehow get to kill your targets!". Lazy as fuck not to let those ways to kill be told within context -- eavesdropping etc. Especially loved Blood Money.

HITMAN is too much like Absolution, I thought?

You really should play through all the episodes. HITMAN shares much more in common with Blood Money than Absolution.

I could explain the story in one short sentence. I dont call that a story. It doesnt even have a conclusion and you dont even know it is a story until you complete the last mission or so.

Welcome to the Hitman series..? I feel like you haven't played any of the previous games. The story has always been light, with little to no connection to the actual missions. HITMAN is no different in that regard, except now, each level has tons of mini-stories. Without a doubt, HITMAN has more writing than any of the previous games. It's just that most of the storytelling is done through the environment and NPCs, rather than cutscenes. In previous games, most of your targets were pretty shallow. They didn't have much depth in terms of personality, relationships, history, etc. In HITMAN, each target has plenty of all those things and it's only through repeated playthroughs that you can learn them all.

It's bizarre how some people believe that the previous games were story-driven. Only Absolution was story-driven and the game suffered for it. In every other game, the story has always been placed firmly in the background and served as context more than a driving force.

Quinn wrote on Jun 20, 2017, 11:26:*the suits sitting around the table*

Suit 1: Lets make it episodic. Shit seems so sell.

Suit 2: Yes! And lets remove any sense of a real story. That shit is expensive.

Suit 3: Yes! And lets show the players all the ways they can assassinate their target, so we can fill up that storyless void with useless replayability. Because achievements!

Suit 4: No idea why we'd do that but these pathetic, completionist fuckers swallow everything as long as it keeps them away from facing real life. So yes!

Suit 2: No reason to be so cynical, Laurens, but yes!

*and HITMAN 2016 was born*

Genuine question: Have you actually played HITMAN 2016? If you have, you would know that it has just as much story as Blood Money, Contracts, Silent Assassin and Agent 47. There is an overarching storyline that is conveyed through cutscenes between missions. All of the missions tie into the storyline as well.

In fact, one could argue that it has more story because they've really fleshed out the targets, NPCs and environments. There's plenty of backstory and side-story to discover in each level, which is part of the reason why the game has so much replayability.

Finally, you might be the only Hitman fan (are you actually a Hitman fan or did you only play Absolution?) that complains about replayability. Seriously, replayability is one of the pillars of the series.

In any case, it's cool of IO to do this, though the headline is misleading. They aren't giving the full Episode 1 for free, only the tutorial levels. Paris is not free.

Quinn wrote on Jun 18, 2017, 13:23:Fucking drama queens. Them losers been playing that game every fucking day since it came out for PC. This is the kind of shit that has Rockstar flip the PC off for.

So you're against gamers voicing their discontent when a developer kills mods in order to juice more money out of the customers? You like all these microtransactions and day one DLC bs? Because it happened when gamers didn't say anything. Who cares if Rockstar puts their game on PC or not. We've got infinite good games to play, we don't need to bend over for them.

Voice it all you want, but it has nothing to do with game itself. Reviews aren't there for angry nerds and their bandwagoning circlejerks trying to "stick it to the man." They're for telling people your opinion of the game. This type of pointless nonsense (along with the retarded memes and other jokes so often voted "most helpful") is why a lot of people don't bother reading Steam reviews at all.

Agreed. People like to use Steam reviews to voice their political opinions, resulting in good games getting bad reviews for reasons that have nothing to do with the games themselves.

Also, Steam reviews generally account for less than 5% of a game's total player base and negative reviews tend to be less than 1%. It's the very definition of "vocal minority." GTAV has already sold over 7 million copies on Steam alone and the vast majority of those customers don't use mods.

Once you've unlocked something, you can access it offline. They patched that in. You still have to be online to unlock it in the first place but after that, you can access it online or offline. If you go back to HITMAN in a few years, you'll still be able to access everything you've unlocked offline.

In any case, I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually remove the online requirements entirely. Server upkeep probably isn't cheap and they no longer have a publisher footing the bill.

Prez wrote on Jun 16, 2017, 15:11:The worst part of the last HITMAN game was that it was poi tlessly broken up into episodes and that was Squeenix's fault, not IO's (Squeenix has a hard-on for episodic gaming it seems). Since it will be impossible for them to finance another AAA HITMAN game without getting another publisher or a crowdfunding campaign I say they should work on Freedom Fighters 2 in the interim.

Did you play the first season of HITMAN? Because it actually worked really well as an episodic series. The wait between episodes encouraged you to replay levels and each level had tons of content that could only be discovered through multiple playthroughs. The series has always been about replayability and the episodic format is well-suited to that.

Also, I'm not sure why you think that working on Freedom Fighters 2 would make more sense than continuing to work on season 2 of HITMAN. They've already built the foundations and framework for HITMAN. Now they're just creating content. Creating a new Freedom Fighters game from scratch would be far more expensive. In addition, the episodic format of HITMAN provides a more frequent source of revenue, something that's very important for independent studios. Finally, HITMAN has an established fanbase, which is why there are 6 HITMAN games and several spinoffs. Freedom Fighters only had one game and it wasn't successful enough to spawn any sequels.

This could go either way. A game like HITMAN is expensive to create and maintain. I don't know if the game is successful enough to actually pay for itself. Also, it will be difficult for IO to find contract work because most publishers stick with their own internal dev teams now.

I'd be surprised if they didn't start to diversify and start creating smaller games, like Double Fine does. I wouldn't be surprised if HITMAN season 2 is crowdfunded, either.

Steam features that I find useful:- Cloud saves.- Trading cards (free money).- Forums (great for finding patch notes and bug reports).- Instant messaging (I use it to communicate with people all the time).- Workshop.- Wishlist.- Match invites/joins.- Curators (easy way to find out if a game is capped at 30 FPS).- User reviews (good for obscure games or to find out if a game has performance issues that professional reviews ignore).

You may not like Steam but to claim that it is "just" a game delivery service is pretty silly. It offers a wide array of features that most people find useful, which is why it's the most popular of the distribution platforms by a large margin.

I'm not sure why anyone would crowdfund an MMO. MMOs are very expensive to make. No amount of crowdfunding will be enough to completely fund an MMO's development or upkeep. $11 million is nothing. The average AAA game costs at least $40 million and that's just for a 10 hour single-player campaign.

I feel like everyone complaining about the episodic format hasn't actually played the game.

It has an overarching story, just like the previous games. It is told primary through cutscenes after each mission (just like in the previous games). However, unlike the previous games, there are lots of side-stories in each level that flesh out the lore and characters. The targets are far more developed as well, with plenty of personality, relationships and history to uncover. That's part of what makes multiple playthroughs so rewarding. There's simply no way you're going to learn everything about each target in a single run.

As a hardcore fan of the series, I can honestly say that HITMAN is the best one. Even better than Blood Money. If you boycotted it because of its episodic format, you missed out and potentially helped cause the end of the franchise.

Quinn wrote on May 23, 2017, 11:30:Let's face it. Episodic HITMAN was a stupid as fuck choice. Many people are like me and don't just play games because LOLZ FUN GAMEPLAY, and actually want a substantial experience; a good, moving story.

The last game was a motherfucking arcade game. "Here's your target and these are the possible ways to take them out. Find out how and be the ultimate assassin :D".

Fuck off.

Uh, if you're looking for a good, moving story, the Hitman series is the last place you should be looking. It's never had a good, moving story, even when it wasn't episodic. Hitman: Absolution was the only one that tried to be story-driven and that ended badly.

I was skeptical of the episodic format at first but it actually worked really well. HITMAN has the biggest, most detailed and most replayable levels in the series and being episodic encourages you to replay them.

El Pit wrote on May 14, 2017, 13:38:I am still waiting for a GOTY edition. Don't want to buy games in bits and pieces (buy Ultimate for just $10 more! Not including DLC1 - $19.99! DLC2 - $19.99! DLC... And so on).

Rumors seem to suggest that there won't be any DLC because most of the dev team has been moved on to different projects.